Written, directed, and led by “The Chair” scene-stealer Nana Mensah, “Queen of Glory” is an enthralling movie exploring the idea of dwelling, warts and all. For Sarah (Mensah), a Ghanaian-American doctoral candidate at Columbia, her dwelling — that’s, her household, ancestral tradition, and childhood group — is a supply of frustration, one thing she received’t notably miss when she strikes together with her married boyfriend (Adam Leon) to Ohio. However her priorities begin to shift when her mom unexpectedly dies.
Abruptly Sarah is again in her outdated Bronx neighborhood, sleeping in her childhood room, making preparations, and determining what to do about the home and the Christian bookstore, King of Glory, her mom left her. Plus, her chauvinist father (Oberon Ok.A. Adjepong) — who moved again to Ghana when Sarah was a child — has returned, treating Sarah like a servant, butting into her private life, and usually annoying the shit out of her.
It’s a ache within the ass till it isn’t. After a couple of days in Pelham Parkway, Sarah settles right into a contented groove. She bonds with Pitt (Meeko), the previously incarcerated assistant on the bookstore, whose abilities as a baker have helped draw clients. She reconnects together with her neighbor and highschool classmate Tanya (Anya Migdal), who has an aggravating household of her personal. And, most importantly, Sarah permits herself to turn into reacquainted together with her Ghanaian roots. At first, she plans a standard mourning ceremony simply to appease her father and aunties. By the top of the movie, nonetheless, the rituals are genuinely serving to her course of her grief, and rediscover her love of her heritage.
Interspersed with footage of African social, political, and cultural gatherings, scenes of conventional Ghanaian dance, and a drumbeat-heavy soundtrack, “Queen of Glory” was clearly made with numerous affection and fervour. Mensah’s household additionally owned a Christian bookstore within the Bronx, and he or she wrote the movie in response to the stereotypical characters she has been requested to audition for. Fed up with the “unfathomably downtrodden Black American or African girls” roles, she informed us, she “began crafting a story out of and in response to these issues that had been private to [her].” Hers is a method of filmmaking I need to see extra of — from Mensah, in fact, but additionally from any indie filmmaker with one thing to say.
“Queen of Glory” is now in theaters.
Supply: Women And Hollywood